In the Details Of a Mass Arrest, Two Versions, Worlds Apart

By TRYMAINE LEE

Published: June 24, 2007

The police officers hopped from their vans and cars with shouts of ''Hands up,'' ''Don't move,'' and ''Get on the ground.'' Someone in the crowd of young people yelled, ''Nobody run'' -- and nobody did, witnesses said. The teenagers were frisked, forced up against a fence or a wall, or pushed to the asphalt.

Those watching said the mood was almost subdued as the handcuffs went on, the loudest sound the whir of a television news helicopter hovering above. ''None of us understood what was going on,'' said Dana Hollis, whose teenage daughter was arrested. ''Everything just happened so fast.''

Thirty-two young people, the youngest 13, were arrested the afternoon of May 21 in Bushwick, Brooklyn. They had been walking as a group to the subway, which they planned to take to Coney Island for the wake of Donnell McFarland, 18, who had been fatally shot a week earlier.

The police, already fearing retaliatory violence, say the teenagers were exchanging gang signs, wearing T-shirts with a gang name and bounding atop cars when they were arrested. Parents and teachers of the group and witnesses said that they were no more boisterous than any group of teenagers would be in similar circumstances, and that they did not see any youths atop cars.

The charges are misdemeanors: unlawful assembly and disorderly conduct. No drugs or weapons were found, and there were no injuries to those arrested or to the police. The officers did not draw their guns. Yet this roundup of Brooklyn teenagers and young people has gotten widespread attention.

Interviews with those arrested, their parents, witnesses who did not know the teenagers, as well as accounts provided by the Police Department and the Brooklyn district attorney, provided contradictory versions of events. But they correspond in one aspect: The arrests were part of a police operation that unfolded with precision.

Undercover officers circled in unmarked cars; a police captain monitored the teenagers gathering; and blue-and-white vans and buses cut off Putnam Avenue in both directions at a key moment, trapping the teenagers less than a block into their journey.

''Once the kids hit Irving, the police came from everywhere,'' said Lisa Guerrero, 52, who lives nearby and saw the group gather and head up the block. ''I was like: 'What happened? Why is this happening?' ''

Paul J. Browne, the Police Department's chief spokesman, said, ''The police were being responsive to community leaders who warned that the group was poised for trouble after a week of murder, shootings and fistfights between two rival gang factions in Bushwick.''

On May 15, Mr. McFarland was shot in the head at Linden Street and Knickerbocker Avenue by James Kelly, 16, the police said. Mr. Kelly was soon arrested and charged with murder and criminal possession of a weapon. Friends of both said the shooting was the climax in a string of violent events involving Mr. Kelly, a onetime friend of Mr. McFarland's turned enemy.

The shot echoed for blocks.

''We were on the basketball court, and we all kind of froze,'' said Asher Callender, 19. Someone ran into the park, crying, using Mr. McFarland's nickname: ''They killed Freshh.''

The police say the murdered teenager was the leader of the Pretty Boy Family, which they describe as a subdivision, or ''set,'' of the Bloods gang. But those who knew Mr. McFarland and are familiar with the Pretty Boy Family described it as a tight group of friends who like to dance and hang out, not a gang. The police say the Pretty Boy Family had been at odds with James Kelly's gang, the Linden Street Bloods, another Bloods subdivision, for some time. Both sets frequent the Hope Gardens housing project.

Word of Mr. McFarland's death spread from the neighborhood streets into neighborhood schools.

''I didn't have a single class that whole week where I didn't have two or three people in my class crying,'' said Tabari Bomani, a social studies teacher and college counselor at Bushwick Community High School, where many students knew Mr. McFarland. Dozens of them met with grief counselors, school officials said.

Mr. McFarland's wake was set for the following Monday at a funeral home in Coney Island. Officials at the Bushwick high school allowed students to sign out for the day if parents signed a permission slip.

Mr. Callender said that many students wanted to attend, but that he was one of the few who knew the way to the funeral home. So he spread the word: Meet at Putnam Park between noon and 12:30 the day of the wake, May 21. They would gather, walk up Putnam, and head for the subway station.

Meanwhile, police were connecting the dots in a yearlong investigation into the Pretty Boy Family and a recent rash of gang violence.

The police said a Pretty Boy Family member was shot in the foot two weeks before Mr. McFarland's death. Later, they said, there was a confrontation between William Gonzalez, who had been feuding with Mr. McFarland, and a man they believed belonged to the Pretty Boy Family.

The same day, Jakai King, whom the police described as a member of the Linden Street Bloods, was attacked by members of the Pretty Boy Family, the police said. Two days later, they said, he was attacked again, this time stripped down to his underwear and sent running down the street.